With the VIA KT400 peaking its head out into the public the need for PC3200 is now here. There are only a few companies that are actually making PC3200 and even less which are making good quality ones. Corsair is a company which is devoted to making high quality, fast, top of the line RAM. I previously reviewed a stick of Corsair’s XMS2700 and was able to reach PC3000 speeds with it. I was really impressed with the quality and speed the XMS2700 was able to produce so I am really excited to see what this stick of 3200 can do.
| PC1600 | DDR200 | 100MHz |
| PC2100 | DDR266 | 133MHz |
| PC2400 | DDR300 | 150MHz |
| PC2700 | DDR333 | 166MHz |
| PC3000 | DDR366 | 183MHz |
| PC3200 | DDR400 | 200MHz |
| PC3500 | DDR433 | 216MHz |
Features
- 512 Megabytes of memory
- Implemented using 32M x 8 DDR SDRAMs with 6 nanosecond access time
- 100% tested at 200MHz in high performance motherboards
- Integrated aluminum heat spreader for improved thermal performance
- Benchmarked over multiple chipsets, processors and motherboards
- Legendary Corsair reliability and service
- Lifetime warranty
Test Specifications
- Each module is tested in either Epox EP-8K3A and/or ASUS P4S333 at 200MHz
- Latency: 2-3-3 T1 (one module installed)
- Latency: 2.5-3-3 T2 (two module installed)
- SPD programmed at proposed JEDEC values for PC2700 (PC3200 not defined by JEDEC)
The stick comes in a plastic container which would be good for display purposes, it is also more protected than if it was just in an anti static bag. There is no real reason to have any elaborate packaging on RAM because if there was it would only increase production costs meaning you are going to have to pay more.
The Corsair XMS3200 comes with the traditional Corsair heatspreader which sport the Corsair logo, XMS technology, and website. As you can see this module is model #CMX512-3200C2. I really like that this RAM comes with heatspreaders, when you are overclocking and pump up the VDIMM it will help to dissipate heat and help you overclock higher.
This particular module is double sided because its 512MB, and it would be a bad idea to have it single sided. Corsair does make single sided 256MB modules which have been seen to overclock a little better than the double sided ones. This is the same picture from the Corsair XMS2700 review only because they look exactly the same.
I will be testing this module on an EPoX 8K3A+ because it is the best KT333 motherboard on the market right now. There are only a few companies right now that have a KT400 motherboard available and unfortunately I have not received one yet. I will have the EPoX KT400 motherboard in a few weeks when it comes out at which time I will review the motherboard and revisit this stick of RAM. For benchmarking I will be using SiSoft Sandra’s memory benchmark, Quake 3, and Jedi Knight 2. All of the timings on the RAM will be set to 2-2-2 1T making it the fastest possible. All of the settings for Quake 3 and Jedi knight will be at 640×480 and have the lowest detail to more stress the CPU and memory rather than the video card. I will also be seeing how high this RAM will overclock as far as the FSB is concerned.
Test Bed:
- EPoX 8K3A+
- 1.2GHz Thunderbird
- 80GB Maxtor ATA133 HDD
- Corsair 512MB XMS3200
- 3DPower Geforce 3
- Cooler Master ATC-101-SX2
- Zalman 300w PSU (review to come)
- Sound Blaster Live! Value
- ATi TV Wonder VE
- 10/100 NIC
- Plextor 40x12x40 CDRW (review to come)
- pioneer 16x DVD
WCPUID is a program that tells you a lot about your CPU like the Internal clock, system bus, system clock, multiplier and a slew of other things like whether it supports MMX, MMX+, SSE, SSE2, 3DNow! or 3DNow+. It will also give you detailed information about the CPU itself like what kind of processor it is, platform, vendor string, CPU type, family, and name string. This is a really small program that is free but it does a great job at telling you what you need to know. At 133 FSB you can see that the internal clock is 1.2Ghz and the system bus is 266MHz which is the RAM bus.
All of the benchmarks were done with all of the settings at the most aggressive, 2-2-2 1T and 4-way bank interleave and the DRAM clock was set at 166. The RAM is tested at 2-3-3 before shipping but I want to run it at 2-2-2 and see what it is really made of. At 133FSB the scores are not bad and I can tell that this RAM really wants to be overclocked.
I ran Quake 3 demo001 and Jedi Knight jk2ffa time demos just to get some gaming benchmarks, all of the settings were at the lowest and the resolution was at 640×480. I had all of the settings at the lowest because I wanted to stress the system as a whole rather than just the video card. Quake 3 gave me 165.6 frames per second while Jedi Knight 2 pumped out 77.1. Jedi knight 2 gets about half the FPS that Quake 3 does because it is a newer game and even at the lowest settings still is more intensive overall. Anyways that’s enough of this 133 FSB lets kick it up a notch
I rebooted and set the FSB to 166 in the BIOS and dropped the multiplier to 7.5 which gave me an overall speed of 1250MHz, this also bumped the RAM bus up to 333Mhz rather than 266MHz. At this speed the RAM is still going slower than it is designed to but the right speed for this motherboard.
There is a good boost in the SiSoft scores after pushing the FSB up to 166 as you can see. Both the Integer and Floating point operations got higher scores and this RAM hasn’t even broken a sweat.
Quake 3 only gained 3.3 FSB more with the FSB at 166 rather than 133. Jedi Knight 2 only gained 1.8 FPS more than it did while at 133 FSB. The reason why there isn’t a huge gain in performance in these game benchmarks is because I am only going for a high FSB not a high MHz. The reason I am not going for the biggest overclock possible is because I don’t want the CPU to limit the RAM. Yes the CPU is a limitation while overclocking but I want to focus on the RAM only because all CPUs are different.
I wanted to see what this RAM could really do especially at 2-2-2 1T because its specifications are 2-3-3 1T. I rebooted the computer and went into the BIOS, I had to mess around with the FSB, multiplier, Vcore, Vdimm, and other settings to get this to do what I wanted but that’s all part of the overclocking game. After about an hour of testing I finally got this board to do what I wanted it to. I got this stick of RAM up to 200FSB (2-2-2 1T) with all of the other settings in the BIOS at the most aggressive.
I had to bump the Vcore up to 1.90v which the EPoX 8K3A+ will do without any modification and the Vdimm was set to 3.1v which is quite a lot more than the default 2.5v. Once again I am not seeing how high I can get the MHz on this testing because I don’t want the CPU holding me back, I want this RAM to be able to do what it can.
Getting the higher MHz is just a matter of moving up the multiplier which you can do very easily. I am really impressed that this RAM could do 400Mhz 2-2-2 1T I didn’t think it was going to be able to with my initial testing but after some work I finally got it stable. I tried to go higher than 200FSB but doing so lead to my system being unstable.
There is a pretty good boost in scores with this jump from 166 to 200 FSB as you can imagine. I really wish that I had a KT400 motherboard right now so I could really test this stick of RAM out the right way. Until I get one this motherboard will have to suffice, needless to say the results are very impressive.
After bumping up the FSB to 200 Quake 3 gained 12.6 more frames per second than it did at 166 FSB. Jedi Knight 2 gained 5.7 FPS more than at 166 FSB. If I were to overclock my video card and overclock the CPU to its highest the results would be amazing I’m sure.
Conclusion
Corsair has once again made an outstanding product and my thoughts of the company is still the same as it was from when I reviewed their XMS2700. They are continuing to make superior products which can outperform almost any other in the market. This is the best stick of RAM that I have come across so far and it is very high quality. I really love the fact that this stick was able to run at 2-2-2 1T @ 200 FSB because that’s faster than its specifications. I really need a KT400 motherboard because I want to see how high I can get this stick of RAM on a motherboard that can actually utilize the full potential of it. If a KT333 motherboard can do DDR400 2-2-2 1T a good KT400 motherboard should own. This stick of RAM is going to cost you about $200 which isn’t cheap but the quality and performance that you are going to get from it are more than worth the money. Overall I am going to give this stick of RAM a 10/10 and award it the OCmodshop seal of approval. I would like to thank Corsair for sending this module over for review.
Pros
- Can run at 400MHz 2-2-2 1T
- Can handle high voltage (3.1v)
- Heatspreaders
- Able to perform better than specifications
Cons
- None